


Spiked Tea

by SporkEmpire



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, Nerd!Dan, Theatre, have fun with my horrendous art, punk!phil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 07:34:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13654410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SporkEmpire/pseuds/SporkEmpire
Summary: "It was funny, Dan thought, letting his fingers drift over the wood of the table, leaving a dustless trail in his wake. At the beginning of the year, he'd quietly thought of Phil as some sort of freak of nature. A distant monstrosity, always there but never a direct threat to Dan.The boy sitting before him with his cartoonish cactus tattoo poking out from underneath the wide neck of his woollen sweater was none of these things. As Phil quietly sipped his tea, his eyes flickered over the rim of his mug, waiting for Dan to say something.He wasn't a freak of nature. He wasn't a monstrosity, nor was he distant. And Dan was sure he'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the world who was less of a threat to him."A phanficWarnings: Theatre kids, (before you tell me that theatre kids don't deserve a warning, go have a lengthy, honest discussion with one of them and come back to me) gayness, and the odd curse wordThanks to @prompts-to-inspire on Tumblr for the idea





	Spiked Tea

A/N: Look, kids, this isn't my first writing extravaganza, but that doesn't mean I don't suck. While this isn't my first work, it certainly is my first published one, and if it's absolutely terrible, feel free to say so. Constructive criticism is delightful.

That's all I have to say. I'll try not to bug you with my opinions and anecdotes more than necessary. Have fun, m8s. 

Phil's awakening wasn't a delightful one, to say the least. He'd been awoken by someone insistently shaking his shoulders in his still darkened bedroom. This should have been a good indication that it was nowhere near time for him to wake up and start getting ready for school, but he propped himself up on an elbow to address the figure anyway.

"Ugh, Martyn, what time is it?" He groaned, rubbed his eyes and ignored the pounding in his head.

"Time for you to get up, Phil. We've got places to be and people to see," Martyn, his older brother, whispered. Even submerged in darkness, Phil saw the familiar glint of his sibling's signature smile, the one that instilled in him both fear and exhilaration.

What Phil wanted to say was, 'The sun's not even up yet, you rusty baguette. Get out of my room,' but he didn't. In fact, his actual response wasn't even close.

"Uhm, alright. Just... just let me get a shirt on, or something." Martyn nodded, released Phil's shoulders, and strode out of the room, leaving the door dangling open. Curiosity overtook Phil's overwhelming urge to turn on his side and go right back to sleep.

He tugged on a dark grey tee, a leather coat over that - he assumed whatever Martyn had planned wasn't going to take place in their cramped apartment - and whispered a quick goodbye to his sleeping parents before meeting his brother at the front door. Martyn was already waiting for him at the bottom, holding a paper bag in his left hand and a ring of keys in his right.

"Eat quickly," Martyn said, tossing the bag at Phil. His fingers fumbled the object, letting it fall at his feet. Martyn, thankfully, pretended not to notice his younger brother's lack of coordination and simply opened the front door. "I don't want you getting crumbs on my bike."

"Where are we even going at," Phil glanced at the analogue clock on the opposite wall, "2:43 in the morning?"

"You'll see," Martyn said, grinning.

 

 

As it turned out, Martyn wasn't expecting him to eat a paper bag for breakfast. Hidden within it were three chocolate chip waffles and a packet of syrup, which Phil had absolutely no time to open before he was inhaling them in rapid succession. He tucked the crumpled paper away in his jacket's pocket.

After around ten minutes of driving the startlingly empty roads, the loud growl of Martyn's motorbike echoing around deserted streets, they pulled into a parking lot. The bike's snarl cut off suddenly, and then Martyn was hopping off, gesturing for Phil to do the same.

"Oh for the love of God," Phil groaned, having removed his helmet. His stomach rumbled in irritation, the three waffles not being enough of a breakfast (shocking). Martyn's face was spread wide in a grin. As if he wasn't the worst brother in the entire universe.

"You woke me up," Phil said, speaking each word with deliberation, "At 3 am," He paused again, raising a hand to point at the empty building before them, "On a fucking school night, to go bowling with you?"

Martyn shrugged. "Well, you don't have to be quite so excited about it."

"For Christ's sake." Phil's head dropped into his hands and he rubbed his eyes, not to erase the sleeplessness he felt. He looked up again after scrubbing vigorously with his hands, sure that the scene before him would disappear.

It didn't.

"There isn't even anyone here! How are we supposed to bowl at three in the goddamn morning if there's no one to operate the machines?" Phil cried. He was aware that he was being a tad melodramatic, but he felt as though the current situation justified his outrage.

"Ah," Martyn said, taking a confident step towards the abandoned building, "Now that's where you're wrong."

Phil groaned. His brother was irritating at the best of times, but this was a whole new level of stupid. "You absolute rat. You absolute... fucking... rat." He punctuated his words with a couple of angry stomps, but then gave up on being angry and just following his brother with a normal gait.

"Yeah, yeah. You'll thank me later."

"You mean later when I'm practically falling asleep on my desk because you woke me up four hours too early to go bowling?"

"Since when do you care about getting straight A's?"

Phil sighed. Martyn wasn't wrong; he was more of a B's person, the odd C if he had an unsympathetic teacher. He wasn't flunking out of school, but he certainly wasn't excelling in it.

"Doesn't mean I don't like sleeping."

"Aw, come on, lighten up a little. Look, there's Liguori. Aren't you two buddies?" Martyn pointed to a curly-haired figure trying his best to lean casually against a wall. His hair gel glinted off of a nearby flickering lamppost.

Phil rolled his eyes. "He's got a name, you know."

"Yeah, Liguori. Didn't I just say that?"

"I mean a first name."

"Whatever. It's not like he's the one I'm here for. Speaking of," Martyn said, breaking away from his younger brother to a gathering of teenagers crowding the entrance. They welcomed him with open arms, sending a few sneers Phil's way.

"You brought the kid along?" he heard someone say.

"C'mon, Mar. He's a little too young to be... y'know."

Martyn snorted. "Whatever. He would've prattled off to the first adult who'd listen if I didn't let him tag along."

Phil just sighed, veering around the small collection of kids to his own kind. PJ was still leaning against the wall, but it was only now that Phil noticed the cigarette dangling from his fingers, the smoke trailing from his open mouth. His eyes were closed and his chest rose and fell with deep, even breaths.

"You'll ruin your lungs, you know," Phil said, sidling up to him and staring out into the great, dark expanse of sky that stretched above them. PJ didn't open his eyes to reply.

"Life's too short to spend it worrying endlessly about the future."

Phil shrugged. "Just don't come running back to me when your hospital bills are through the roof."

PJ snickered. "I won't. Might ask you to come bring me some chocolate whilst I'm in the hospital, though. And don't bring white chocolate." He took a long drag of his cigarette, sighing. His breath would have been visible in the cold air if it wasn't obscured by smoke. "White chocolate is full of lies."

"Don't worry, you've told me before. But, you know, we could just not have that happen in the first place and you could put that cigarette..."

PJ cut him off abruptly. "Phil, for god's sake, drop it. I am not going to the hospital because of one tiny cigarette. I am going to die of boredom if you keep on with that whiny niggling, though."

"Peej, you're the only one of us who's got any chance at getting into a good University. I just want you to have a decent track record before you apply. Is that really so much to ask?"

PJ rolled his eyes. "You sound just like my mum."

"I'm going to be stuck in this fucking awful town for the rest of my life. I'm going to grow up to be a wifeless factory worker with seven cats-"

"You're allergic to cats."

"-Because I want death. Let me finish, would you?"

PJ shrugged.

"Point is, you've actually got something in that head of yours, despite what I've said about it being empty on more than one occasion. You've got some kind of a chance of getting out, becoming a pilot, engineer, a farmer for fuck's sake. I don't care. But I don't want you stuck in Circencester for the rest of your miserable days because you get caught smoking behind the school. Or maybe they'll lock you up after they've found you, red-eyed and asleep, in a drug den. Who knows where this'll lead?"

PJ smiled softly, letting the cigarette hang from his fingertips. "You're making far too big a deal out of this," he mutters, but the cigarette falls from his hand anyway, spending a few moments on the cold ground before PJ snuffs it out with his foot.

"I'm not special, you twat. I'm just another kid who gets straight A's because the teachers in Languna Creek wouldn't flunk a fucking squirrel if it set fire to a classroom," PJ said, pushing off of the wall. Phil noticed that the crowd gathered around the entrance had begun to walk inside.

The person nervously leading the crowd (known to most as 'the Gatekeeper') was Chris Kendall, wearing a Circencester Bowling - Circencester wasn't much for creativity or naming - employee's outfit, with a ring of keys poking out of his pocket. The uniform made him look no less conspicuous as he glanced across the semi-empty parking lot for any possible three am joggers before opening the door, standing back to let the taller kids flood the entrance.

He waited behind the glass door apprehensively, using it as a shield from the crowd. They respected him and his ability to break into anything from an abandoned factory to a dusty, locked attic, but that respect only went so far. If he got in the way, he'd be swept up just like any other sophomore tagging along to this exclusive event.

Chris waited until Phil and PJ were walking inside, letting go of the door handle and walking a couple of steps behind them, watching out for any last-minute newcomers before he locked the door.

It took a few minutes to get all the machines running - a couple of actual employees of the Languna Creek Bowling Centre (there were only so many occupations available in their small, run-down town) were among the horde, breaking away from the overwhelming numbers to unlock the entrance to the control room, briskly getting to work as the lights flickered on one by one.

The bright fluorescents left Phil and PJ squinting after spending so long submerged in darkness. As their eyes adjusted, they began to notice the Gatekeeper himself tagging along behind them, smiling apologetically.

"Can I... I mean, would you mind if..." He suddenly seemed to realize that his whole plot of joining the only other sophomores in the entire building was stupid, footsteps slowing.

At least, until Phil said, "Sure, kid. Whatever you want."

PJ shot him a warning glance, but Phil just shrugged it off. Chris, meanwhile, looked simply ecstatic that he wouldn't have to spend the whole night off in a corner, sipping on lukewarm soda as he watched everyone else having the time of their lives.

"So, um, should we be getting bowling shoes before we... or..." Chris asked, hands nervously fiddling with one another.

PJ snorted. "We broke into this place. I think we're past bowling shoes at this point." Chris nodded a couple of times, muttering 'right' as if this should have been obvious to him. And maybe it should have been, Phil didn't know.

They sat down in the seventh lane, typing names into the screen suspended on a blocky platform, watching as 'Phil', 'Peej', and 'Crabstickz' floated into blank slots. PJ sent a confused glance his way, but Chris just shrugged and chuckled nervously, hands still moving.

"Wait, wait, wait," PJ said, stepping up to the platform again. Another few seconds and the slot which had once read, 'Peej' was now entitled 'KickthePJ', and 'Phil' soon became 'thethiccest'. Phil's new alias hadn't transpired without some controversy, but he threatened to chuck a sneaker at both boys and Chris immediately shut up. PJ grumbled for a bit longer, but he gave up too.

"Right, so, I think you both should know before we get started, I suck at bowling," Chris said, hands losing some of their nervous edge. He plucked a violently pink ball from the rack behind them, testing its weight in his hands before approaching the lane.

Phil raised a single eyebrow in surprise, but said nothing other than, "Don't worry mate, we'll be even worse."

"Woah, woah, woah," PJ interrupted as Chris swung his arm back. "Just what do you think you're doing?"

Chris dropped his arm to his side, looking confused. "Bowling. That's... That is what we're doing, right? I mean, it's a bowling centre, so-"

"No, no. I mean the atrocity you're carrying in your hand."

Chris looked at the bowling ball and realization hit his face. He sighed, making an effort not to roll his eyes. He ignored PJ's further attempts to stop him from bowling with a vibrantly neon ball, rolling the heavy object down the lane with an irritated huff.

He knocked down nine pins on his first go. He looked just as surprised as Phil felt.

"Didn't you say you sucked at bowling?" Phil asked, running a hand through his hair. "I mean, not that I'm complaining or anything, but, like..."

"It's just beginner's luck," Chris said quickly, rolling his hot pink sphere down the lane again and knocking over the last pin standing in the process. The word 'SPARE' appeared on the screen in front of them, a short replay from above of Chris' last roll.

"Beginner's luck," he said again, stuttering a bit around the words this time. PJ's expression went through a short series of different emotions in the span of a few seconds. First, he looked shocked, then a bit confused. He glanced over at Phil as if to assure that Phil had also just witnessed the miracle of nature that had played out before them.

Then he rubbed the inside of his wrist for a few moments, thinking. A few seconds later, he nodded, resigned, and walked to the small rack, picking up a pastel purple ball and walking up to the alley.

"Oh, so it's not an atrocity when you're carrying it?" Chris said, voice as close to a sneer as a nervous wreck like him could manage. PJ shot him a glare and he backed away a few steps.

"Look, if throwing your pride away worked for a fucking twig like you, I don't see why it shouldn't work for me." He didn't wait for Chris to say something in return, probably a comment on his ill-suited use of a double negative. Instead, he turned around, sucked in a breath and let it out through his nose, releasing the bowling ball with careful precision. Or, at least, what seemed like careful precision.

He knocked down five. Then three. It wasn't bad, not bad at all, Phil assured him, but PJ spent at least a minute glaring at Chris as though he'd threatened to kill an innocent puppy.

"Beginner's luck, I'm telling you," Chris insisted as Phil grabbed a maroon bowling ball off the shelves, squatting down and rolling it straight down the alley, managing only a gutter ball.

"Dammit," he muttered, sitting back down in his seat.

As Chris picked up his bowling ball again, PJ squinted at him. He asked, "Where are you from? I've never seen you around here before." Phil rolled his eyes. This was a lie; PJ had seen him plenty of times before. From a distance, perhaps, but still.

He was the gatekeeper after all. Anytime something shifty went on, Chris was probably there, an inordinately large key ring attached to his hip, allowing him access to any building. In fact, it was hard to miss him with the small scraps of metal jingling everywhere he went like sleigh bells from hell.

He'd kept the keys looped around his belt the whole time they'd been bowling, every so often a nervous hand drifting down to make sure that they were still there. Phil supposed it made sense. The kind of crowd Chris hung around with was not the kind of crowd one would want to have access to such incredible power. Who knows what these kids would get up to if they had the keys in their filthy paws?

Not that everyone here was filthy. Just most. Some of them he knew he'd seen hanging around in dank alleyways before, leaning against dumpsters as they sipped amber liquid from bottles that Phil had a feeling wasn't something a member of the PTA would want on school grounds.

They could be perfectly fine people if they chose to, they just tended not to be. Why and how Chris had even managed to get swept along in with these kids was a mystery to Phil.

Chris shrugged in response to PJ's inquiry. "I mean, I'm from here. I don't know how you've managed to go for so long without noticing me because I'm with these people pretty much all the time," he said as if reading Phil's mind.

"What school?" PJ said, not putting in the effort to formulate a complete sentence. Apparently, this conversation wasn't worth it.

"Languna Creek. I'm in your science class," he said, becoming steadily quieter and steadily more incredulous. "Ms Federici? I only sit a couple of desks away from you. I mean, I guess I wear a hat most of the time. Still."

PJ's eyebrows scrunched together. "Really? Never noticed."

"Yeah, always so busy with that girlfriend of yours, I suppose." If Phil didn't know better, he thought he might have detected a hint of jealousy in Chris' tone. But, just like that, it was gone, and he wasn't sure whether to believe himself or not.

PJ smiled. "What can I say? I'm a real ladies man."

"Didn't you throw her into a trash can yesterday? Well, perhaps not throw. Gently lay as she protested with nail and tooth."

"Look, man, Sophie was asking for it."

"Exactly what did she do?"

"Something terrible. Something life-destroying. Something that could tear apart the very fabric of the universe if another human being were to ever hear of its existence."

Phil cut in. "She said she didn't like his hair."

Chris snickered. PJ acted as though his face wasn't reddening.

"You expect me to let that slide?" he muttered, shrivelling further into his seat. "That's like telling me she didn't like my face. I can't help what I can't change. Maybe I didn't like her hair either, but at least I had the human decency not to say something about it."

"No, you had the human decency to put her in a dumpster," Chris said. He was looking less and less anxious by the minute the more he became aware that these weren't vicious people who would rip you limb-from-limb if you stepped out of line. Phil and PJ weren't tough, just idiots, he concluded.

"Yes. Precisely. Glad you're finally seeing my side of things."

A gangly teenager shouted across the room at them. "Hey! If you three want to sit around gossiping like a bunch of fucking girls, then let someone else have the lane!" Chris' eyes regained some of the fear they'd lost, but Phil and PJ weren't even startled.

The average person would find the teenager's appearance unnerving, but Phil had been raised by these people, and PJ was hardly a stranger to the odd lip piercing. Phil watched with a small smile on his face as PJ flipped them off and returned to the topic at hand.

"What- PJ!" Chris cried, scandalized. "You can't just... you can't just do that!"

"I can do whatever I bloody well please," he said. "I put my girlfriend in a dumpster, didn't I? This is hardly the worst thing I've done."

"He has a point," Phil said, glancing at the time on the screen suspended above them with their names listed on it. It read 3:47. He needed a cup of coffee; today was going to be a long day.

***

Sometimes it's difficult for people to consider that others have views differing from their own. They spend so much time immersed in their own subconscious, wallowing around in the opinions that only they have, that it can be shocking to find that not everyone experiences reality the same way they do.

For example, today Dan had no desire to get out of bed. In his opinion, his school was a waste of money and valuable energy and presented nothing more than some far-fetched drama that drained the spirit out of him. He felt that he would be much better off getting the proper amount of sleep a growing teenage boy needed than sitting around in a plastic chair that left his legs numb, trying to absorb pointless facts and project due dates.

His mother did not agree. It was 7:42 in the morning, and she had reached what Dan referred to as stage four of Trying to Wake Him Up. Stage one was gently calling his name from across the room, stage two was shaking his shoulder a little bit, stage three was negotiating, and stage four was threats.

"Dan, you're going to be late," he heard her warn him as she busied herself picking up stray items of clothing he'd tossed about his room and tucking them into his laundry basket. "If you keep going about this way, you're going to fall behind in your lessons."

"I'm already behind," he groaned, turning over to face away from her and burying his head in his pillow. "One day isn't going to change anything."

"Oh yes, it will. If you miss one more day because you overslept, I'm going to ground you."

"I don't have a life anyway, Mum. When's the last time you saw me out of the house?" he asked, but dropped the pillow, realizing that he wasn't going to get any more sleep with this nonsense going on. His mother found a sock stuck under the wheel of the chair sitting in front of his desk. Tossing that into the bin, she seemed to decide that she'd picked things up enough for today.

"You should really try cleaning your room more," she said to him, holding the door open so he could trudge out and down the stairs. "Your roommate in college isn't going to be happy to find he's got to live with a boy who leaves socks everywhere."

Dan said nothing, too busy focusing on not missing a step and tumbling down the stairwell. He scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes, hair curly and sticking up wherever it could.

"Whatever," he finally grumbled, having reached the end of the stairs. The wooden panels beneath his feet left him sliding across the floor rather than walking on it, mismatched socks skidding on the smooth surface.

 

 

The bus stop was frigid, more so than Dan had expected. He crossed his arms as tightly as he could, trying to retain body heat since the loose jumper he'd thrown on wasn't doing anything for him.

His younger brother had warned him that it was far too cold outside to be wearing so little, but since he did it while shoving Honey Loops into his face, pyjama pants swinging at his feet, Dan didn't take him very seriously. As he stood, fingers cold and numbing, he regretted his decision.

"are you trying to turn into a human icicle?" a familiar voice piped up behind him. This voice was much smarter than he, muffled by what was bound to be six layers of heavy fabric. "Oh god, your hair is literally ice," the voice said, a hand suddenly sifting through the solid chunks of hair on his head. He'd taken a six-minute shower and had sprayed himself with Frebreeze for lack of a better option. He'd barely been able to pull his sneakers on before booking it out the door.

Maybe he should actually try to get up earlier? Nah.

Anyway, his last-minute hygiene had resulted in his damp waves solidifying the second they hit the chilly air. Dan sighed, turning around to address the bearer of the voice, seeing a blonde figure standing before him. She had to stretch a bit to reach the top of his head, being distinctly shorter than he despite the fact that she was the older of the two.

Louise noticed his irritated gaze and drew her hand back. "What's up?"

He sighed. "I woke up twenty minutes ago, my science homework is only halfway done and due today, and my stomach is very, very empty. What do you think is up?" He shrugged his backpack off of his left shoulder so that it dangled precariously from his right.

Louise just smiled, shaking her head. Or, at least, Dan assumed she smiled. The scarf she'd draped around her face obscured her mouth, but her eyes glinted, crinkling around the edges.

"Oh perk up," she said. "You'll be fine. Auditions are today!"

Dan rolled his eyes. "Joyous day. Maybe I'll get to be a shrub, like last year."

Louise snorted, tugging her scarf down a little bit, speech clarifying. "Hey, I stand by the fact that you were the best kid auditioning. At least you knew the difference between a turn and completely collapsing on the floor," she said.

She was referring to Zoe Sugg - the shy, soft-spoken girl who'd played Sour Kangaroo in last year's production of the Seussical. She had a lovely singing voice but realized her costume's shoes were far too wide far too late, leaving her sitting on the ground after a couple of sloppy pirouettes. She'd promised not to return to auditions this year.

"Tell that to the Shigella," Dan groaned.

"I still can't believe you even came. You looked like you were about to vomit the whole time." She grinned a little. Louise wasn't one to mock others for their shortcomings, but she knew that it was what Dan needed to perk up a little. Despite his unintimidating outward appearance, he had a cruel sense of humour.

Predictably, a small smile appeared on Dan's face. "I should have used it to my advantage. Gotten some sick on your skirt while you were on stage, or something," he said, elbowing her in the side.

She gasped theatrically. "You wouldn't dare."

He retched.

Louse drew away from him in horror. "I'm filing a restraining order against you," she said with the air of a melodramatic celebrity. They stayed in their positions for a few seconds, Dan bent over and Louise looking like a freeze frame photo of someone reacting to a spider the size of a house. Then they both collapsed into laughter.

"No, but really, if you had vomited on my skirt, I would have shoved you into a bin and bolted the lid shut," Louise said, wiping imaginary tears from her eyes.

"Then I would have truly become one with myself," Dan smiled, unhappiness forgotten.

"Right," Louise said, shaking her head fondly and stepping towards the curb since the yellow, antiquated bus was just beginning to pull up at the curb. "I forgot that your spirit animal was a garbage bag."

"It's my guardian angel too," Dan said, tugging his loose backpack strap back onto his shoulder and following suit. "And my biological father."

"You mean your mother sexed a garbage bag?" Louise said, making a face as they climbed onto the bus, the vehicle's driver throwing them a weird glance as they entered. "How would that even - you know what? I don't want to know."

 

"Let's just say that he was a terrible kisser," Dan said, sitting down in an empty seat with duct tape holding the cushion together. He earned himself a couple more intrigued and disgusted stares, realizing he'd spoken rather loudly only after he'd finished his statement. Louise cringed and laughed simultaneously, face contorting into a strange expression.

"Oh god, Dan, please stop talking."

He just grinned, shrugged, and said, "Alright."

**Author's Note:**

> Have a day. Good, bad, it doesn't matter, just take it as it comes and revel in the exhilaration that comes with existing.


End file.
